The Last Days of Swan Street
#13 - The Beginning
Pleading. Fists clenched, bouncing across the same section of dull glass door. As they land, colour smears and drags across the surface, clouds of yellow, red, green, blue, appearing and disappearing.
"Help! Someone?"
Over and over. Hammering, banging, screaming. Pressing forward against the cold material, colours smearing my face, my skin. There must be someone there. Open. Please.
A nurse eventually appears from a corridor to the side, walking across the reception area towards the main door. She smooths out her long white uniform as she approaches, adjusting a small flat hat sitting on tied back hair. As she nears the door, two thin disposable gauntlets roll down from hand to elbow.
Her head shaking slightly at my impatience, gesturing to calm down, twisting three heavy locks from top to bottom. The glass door slides halfway open, right to left.
"What are you doing here? Everyone should be watching the parade."
"Help me, please. Look!" I point towards the clouds of colour sprayed across the glass.
The nurse takes a deep breath, composing herself. "Okay, I need you to calm down please. What is the problem?" I shoot a glance sideways, noticing the dull cloudy colours sprawling in semi-circular swipes across the glass, already fading. I look down at my boots, my coat, my hands, each scrap of skin and garment suddenly bare. I touch my face. No colours. No powder. Just sweat, grime.
I glance at her. "Even if I told you, you won't believe me."
Debut Novel Arriving Soon
The Last Days of Swan Street is my soon to be released debut dreamtime novel.
A modern paranoid fantasy, it recounts the final days of Solomon Frank, a painter, grappling with the death trip of addiction, disease and the loss of his own sanity in some future dystopian world.
For lovers of strange music only, young and old.
The pain passes into a kind of numbness. She gets louder, falling on top of me, fierce flailing fists, punching and shrieking. It's all spilling out again, whatever it is. I try to grab one of those fists, punching out to meet any point, any target of mine as long as it hurts.
From 'The Last Days of Swan Street', #3.
